The Simbul's Gift (19 page)

“One of the retainers? One of the slaves?”

Leaves rustled as she shook her head. “A ghost, Poppa.”

Lauzoril stopped short, shedding his burdens. He seized his daughter by the shoulders and pivoted her around until the dying sunlight reflected in her eyes. A ghost! He didn't want to think what a ghost could do to his daughter.

“Not a ghost,” he concluded after his examination. Courtesy of his ancestors—
Mimuay's
ancestors—he knew more about the undead than any other enchanter in Thay.

“But he's not alive, Poppa.”

“There are many things that aren't alive—that doesn't mean they're ghosts. Stay away from ghosts, Mimuay.”

“Yes, Poppa. I promise.”

“As you promised to stay out of the grove?”

She pulled away from him, staring back at the trees. This was not a conversation he'd ever meant to have and, not surprisingly, it wasn't going well. They were alike—he'd known that since she was old enough to talk—now they were both angry, both frightened. He took a deep breath and tried again.

“Does your friend have a name?”

“Ferrin. He's been dead a long time.”

In Thazalhar, that was almost a certainty. “So, this Ferrin-whatever—did he tell you to disobey your father?”

Mimuay hesitated, plucking leaf bits from her hair and crumbling them to dust. “He said … He said I had a gift, but you had a greater one that you'd share with me if … if I went to the grove while you were gone and stayed there until you returned.”

Of course, Mimuay had a gift. She was his daughter, as he was Chazsinal's son and Gweltaz's grandson. She was his wife's daughter, as well, and despite what Wenne had become she, too, was the daughter and granddaughter of wizards. The aptitude for magic wasn't completely heritable, but breeding was important. Lauzoril's daughters were well-bred; both could find themselves held as hostages or worse in another Red Wizard's schemes for power. But Mimuay was special. She stood before him, as sunset became twilight, with her fists clenched and tears glistening in her eyes. Lauzoril could only guess what her gifts might measure. He feared her as much as he feared for her.

“Did your friend tell you what this gift I'd share with you might be?”

“No,” she answered, a palpable lie, but one he'd overlook for the moment. “Did you bring me anything?”

Lauzoril pointed to the packs heaped behind him. While Mimuay burrowed with unseemly haste, he swore privately that he'd find Ferrin, the
friend
who'd stolen his daughter's innocence.

“O-o-o, Poppa! The colors—they're lovely!”

Mimuay had found her gift: skeins of jewel-toned silk from the Kara-Turan jungles and a coil of gold wire drawn finer than a single strand of the silk. His eldest daughter was an embroiderer, an enchanter with threads of silk and precious metals. Wenne had taught her; embroidery was the only magic Wenne understood. Lauzoril had hoped—even prayed—that embroidery would be enough for Mimuay.

“How can you tell in this light?” he asked, an honest question considering the circumstances.

“Because you chose them for me,” Mimuay answered, a new maturity in her voice. “Because you're angry with me,
and I want so much for you not to be.” She stood up, a chapbook, not the silks, clutched in her hands. “Nyasia will like the doll. It's pretty, like her. Is this for Mother?”

“It is,” Lauzoril replied. He knew where their conversation headed now, and liked it not at all, but he'd survived all these years because he could face what he didn't like.

“Will you read it to her?”

“If she asks me to. Perhaps she'll ask you instead.”

“Is it about a princess locked in a tower, waiting for a prince to rescue her from her cruel grandfather?”

“Of course—and, yes, there are pictures on every page. The princess has dark brown hair, like yours. The prince … The prince's eyes are green, like yours, too.”

“Was he a cruel man, Poppa?”

“The prince? He did what must be done, Mimuay, and made his peace with the consequences.”

“Not the prince in the story, Poppa. The grandfather—Mother's grandfather. Was he a cruel man?”

“Both your grandfathers were cruel men, Mimuay, who despised their sons. But your mother's grandfather cherished your mother. He tried to protect her the only way he could.”

“Was my great-grandfather the Zulkir of Enchantment?”

A man who'd faced Szass Tam's wrath didn't quake or crumble no matter what his daughter said, but that didn't stop Lauzoril's heart from skipping a beat or two. “More gifts from your friend Ferrin, Mimuay?”

“No, Poppa—and that's the truth, believe me. He's very careful with what he tells me. He says you're very powerful and he doesn't want to anger you.”

“What Ferrin wants and what Ferrin will receive are entirely different, daughter.”

“No, Poppa.
No! Please!
I guessed myself. Mother talks sometimes when you're gone. Mostly … mostly she lives in her storybooks but sometimes she makes sense.”

Lauzoril lashed out with the back of his many-ringed hand, catching the blow just before it struck Mimuay's cheek. “Never—
Never!
—speak so ill of your mother.”

The girl froze, eyes wide with horror: she'd never felt the force of her father's temper—still hadn't felt its full, terrible force for that matter, but she—thank the many gods—
didn't know that. She dropped, sobbing, to her knees.

“I thought you were the prince, Poppa. I didn't guess you were like her grandfather.”

“Exactly like her grandfather, Mimuay. I killed her grandfather in a duel two years before you were born. Since that night I have been the Zulkir of Enchantment.”

Lauzoril hadn't meant to be cruel, not to his daughter nor to the child-woman he found locked away here on the Thazalhar estate, surrounded by tapestries and storybooks. Wenne believed she was a princess and he … he was the image of the prince she'd been promised. For a year the young zulkir indulged her fantasies; after that, it was too late.

“Do you love her, Poppa? Do you love any of us?”

“Yes,” he answered simply. The Zulkir of Enchantment was also the Zulkir of Charm: a consummate liar with the power to make any child believe that the sun rose in the west. He chose, in the end, to tell the truth. “Wenne is the heart of my home, the mother of you and Nyasia—whom I do love without reservation, even when I shouldn't. But no, Mimuay, I do not
love
your mother, not as a man wants to love his wife. When you're older, you'll understand.”

Mimuay sniffed up her tears and rose to her feet. “It's magic, isn't it, that makes her the way she is, like a child who never grew up? Magic that her grandfather put on her?”

“The old zulkir thought he could keep her safe if he enchanted her mind so she could never learn magic—never learn anything at all except her embroidery. She wouldn't become a rival to him or a hostage to others.”

“When will you put that magic on me, Poppa?”

They stared at each other. Lauzoril saw his own death waiting in his beloved daughter's eyes. He should kill her right now. The old zulkir's enchantment wouldn't be enough, hadn't been enough with Wenne. And because he'd raised his daughters with love and kindness—or tried to—he foresaw that Mimuay would come to hate him, come to destroy him when she learned what he did outside Thazalhar.

The spell was in Lauzoril's mind: a word, a gesture, and his daughter would die instantly. He shook his head. The spell might be there, but the will to use it wasn't. He'd
sooner die himself than harm her body or warp her mind.

“There are spells and magic all around you, to keep you safe, but my magic's never touched you, not even to straighten your crooked front tooth. It never will.”

“Will you teach me, Poppa? Will you share your gift?”

Lauzoril couldn't refuse. His daughter became a child again, throwing herself at him, wrapping her arms around his chest. He remembered when she had embraced his knees. It hadn't been all that long ago.

He was a fool, a romantic fool, and she would become his death. But death would come; the new god Kelemvor hadn't decreed any changes. Death
should
come to everyone, even zulkirs.

Especially zulkirs.

So he foresaw that Mimuay would come to hate him, to destroy him. Where was it written that fate was immutable? Szass Tam could destroy them all tomorrow, no matter what a father decided to do tonight. And tonight that father had the leafy smell of his daughter's love surrounding him. The balance pans of his life were level. No father—no man or zulkir—could ask for more.

Bro awoke at sundown, thinking it was dawn, thinking he'd gone to sleep with a stomach full of bad dreams. Then his bed bent beneath him, and he realized he wasn't in bed at all, but clinging to a far-too-slender branch. Immediately, he remembered Sulalk and that he was alone. Those grim memories kept their distance, giving him space to remember how he'd wound up in the young branches of a tall tree.

A
very
tall tree, once Bro had made the nearly fatal mistake of looking down.

He clamped his arms tight against the bark, realized he was naked, too, and considered whether it might not be easier if he let himself fall. When a breeze convinced him that he wasn't ready to die, Bro wriggled backward, one rasping branch at a time. The wood beneath him had grown thick enough to support him securely before he'd pieced events together.

He'd fallen afoul of the seelie. The Simbul's knife had protected him from their nuisance spells while he held it. When he'd finally dropped it, the infuriated creatures had struck hard. Bro blushed thinking of the song he'd sung and the foolish dance, but mostly he remembered Dancer trying to run on a bear's hindquarters. Then they'd turned him into a squirrel—that's how he'd wound up in the tree—and compounded their mischief with a sleep spell.

But what about Zandilar's Dancer? Bears couldn't climb trees as well as squirrels, but horses couldn't climb down at all. Bro almost cursed the seelie, then, but swallowed the thought. Cha'Tel'Quessir legend whispered of
two
seelie races, the mischievous ones who made folk act like fools and their dark cousins who'd hound a man to his
death. He thought he'd encountered the mischievous race and didn't want to risk attracting the other one with a curse.

When he'd been a squirrel, it seemed that he'd run forever between the place where the spell struck and the tree. Returned to his natural form, Bro could see the Simbul's boots not more than twenty paces away. His clothes were there, too. By what little he knew of magic, when a wizard transformed a person, his clothes were supposed to get transformed, too. But the Cha'Tel'Quessir elders always said that magic was different in the Yuirwood.

He shook each garment thoroughly before pulling it on, expecting to find seelie mischief in each sleeve or trouser leg, but they'd left no surprises behind. The cloth, though, remained damp from the afternoon storm. It felt dead and stuck to his skin. He shivered uncontrollably as he laced up the boots—that was mostly hunger.

It was almost two days since he'd eaten a substantial meal; another two and he'd be starving. He stared at the silver hair tied around his wrist.
It
had transformed with him. Maybe the Simbul hadn't thought to look in the trees. Maybe she couldn't find that bit of herself when it was lost within squirrel fur.

Maybe she hadn't come at all.

Bro could imagine someone leaving soggy boots behind, but the knife was right where he'd dropped it, and he couldn't imagine anyone, even a queen, leaving a good steel blade to rust in the forest. His heart hurt from too much loss, too much disappointment. His arm hurt, too, where the seelie barbs had pierced it, and his thumb was warm to the touch. Pain shot up his forearm to his elbow when he bent it. Poison, Bro reckoned, and hoped it wasn't strong enough to make him sick. Come morning he'd look for a willow tree and make a poultice from its bark.

Until morning, he'd look for Zandilar's Dancer. In Sulalk, Bro had patiently trained the colt to recognize his name and come when he heard it. Sulalk was another world, a world with pastures, fences and bright orange carrots from Shali's garden to reward the colt when he'd mastered a lesson.

“Dancer! Dancer,
come!
”

Damp leaves swallowed Bro's words. He sounded young,
frightened, more apt to attract a bear than a colt. A bear or something worse. Seelie weren't the worst that lived in the Yuirwood. There were wolf packs, panthers, and creatures every bit as magical as the seelie, but a hundred times larger and meaner. Bro didn't think the Simbul's knife would help him against a greenhag, if he met one. The danger was small. The Yuirwood recognized the Cha'Tel'Quessir as rightful guardians, and in turn the trees sheltered the Cha'Tel'Quessir from their enemies.

The forest should recognize him, despite his woven-cloth farmers' clothing. The Simbul's boots had almost certainly been made by a Cha'Tel'Quessir craftsman. They were soft, yet sturdy; the way his boots hadn't been since Shali led him out of the forest. They belonged in the forest, as he belonged. But just to be sure, Bro reached inside his shirt and pulled out a leather thong, which also had transformed with him when the seelie turned him into a squirrel. Carved beads slid along the leather. Four of them told his story: a son, recognized by his mother's MightyTree kin and his father's GoldenMoss folk, old enough to take part in the men's rituals, but—lacking a clear-stone bead—not yet a man. Bro's fifth and final bead, on the shadow side of GoldenMoss, was dark in the moonlight. His mother's father had given him that bead the day they buried Rizcarn, because the no-father bead had to come from a man, and no men from GoldenMoss had come to bury Rizcarn.